Dr. Jont B. Allen received a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1966, and MS and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 and 1970. Upon graduation Allen joined Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ, with the Acoustics Research Department (until 1997) as a Distinguished member of Technical Staff. From 1997-2002 he was a member of the newly created Research Division of AT&T Labs. In 2003 Allen retired from AT&T and joined the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering of The University of Illinois, as an Associate Professor, obtaining tenure in 2007.

Feipeng Li received his BS and MS, both in EE from Wuhan University, China, in 1996 and 1999 respectively. After graduation he joined the National Remote Sensing Lab at Wuhan University, where he worked as a research scientist. In Aug. 2003 he became a PhD student in the ECE Department at UIUC. From 2005 to 2007 he has been working as a TA for ECE410 (Digital Signal Processing I). He is the recipient of the 2009 Sundaram Seshu International Student Fellowship from the ECE department. His PhD thesis is focused on identifying the perceptual cues of speech sounds and enhancing speech for the hearing impaired people.

Andrea Trevino received her BS in EE from Rice University in 2007. She is currently pursuing her MS/PhD in EE at the University of Illinois C-U (PhD-ECE) with Prof. Allen and (MS-ECE) Prof.Todd Coleman. Her research is currently focused on statistical signal processing in order to model spiking at the auditory nerve. More generally, she is interested in signal processing, cochlear modeling and speech processing/recognition.

Roger Serwy received his BS in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2007. During the 2005 to 2007 summers, he held internships with Motorola working on embedded Linux systems in set-top boxes and smart phones. While at UIUC, he has been a TA for ECE110 - Intro to ECE during the Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 semesters, as well as an RA at the US Army Corps of Engineers, CERL working on blast propagation. His interests are in signal processing, computer science and simulation, and human factors. Specifically, his research goals are as follows: 1) Provide a new, more complete simulation model of the cochlea, incorporating many of the observed phenomena within it. This includes masking effects and otoacoustic emissions. 2) Create a faster and more accurate AI-gram, a specialized audibility spectrogram, for speech perception research. 3) Discover more deterministic speech perception events associated with consonant and vowel perception.

Received her MA in Linguistics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2005 and in Doctoral degree in Speech and Hearing Science. The research project is titled "nonsense syllable confusion matrix and nonword repetition tasks in Korean-English bilingual children," working with Dr. Allen (ECE) and Dr. Johnson (SHS). At present, she serves as a primary instructor for SHS120, Beckman CS/AI fellow and AHS Block-grant fellow; was Dr. Allen's research assistance for Readinggroup project (2007).

Woojae Han received her BA in French from Catholic Univ. in 2000 and MS in Audiology from Hallym Univ. in 2003, South Korea. After graduation, she had worked for audiological assessments, hearing aid fittings, cochlear implant mapping and rehabilitation of hearing impaired people in Hallym Sacred-Heart Hospital, South Korea. Now, she has pursued her PhD degree in the Department of SHS at UIUC since Aug. 2007, and her research interests include cortical evoked potentials, neuroplasticity as well as speech perception in hearing impaired listeners. Currently, she got a "2009 Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence Award" from Beckman Institute.

Sundeep received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois in May 2007. He has worked as an audio engineering intern at Motorola for Summer 2006 and 2008. His interests lie in audio engineering and the production of sound.

Abhinauv Kapoor received his BS in EE from the University of Illinois in December 2006. He held and engineering development position at Motorola from May 2006. His interests lie in signal processing and information coding in speech. He has taken courses such as Digital Signal Processing, Digital Imaging, Advanced Digital Communications and Wireless Communication Systems. He hopes to work in a cutting edge field involving Communications and Signal Processing.

Anjali recieved her BE in EC from Gujarat University in India in 2006. She worked at Raman Research Institute, Bangalore and thereafter in Tata Cnsultancy Services, Bangalore before Joining UIUC for MS in ECE. She is presently working on verification of feature regions for speech sounds. She has taken several courses such as Audio Engineering, Speech Processing, Random Processes, Probability Theory and Multimedia Signal Processing.

Riya Singh received a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Surathkal, Karnataka, India, and is currently working towards her Masters in ECE, with plans to graduate in May 2010. She is interested in signal processing and speech perception.

Bob received a Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in December 2008. During the summer of 2008 he held an internship at GE Healthcare, where he worked on troubleshooting CT diagnostic imaging systems. He is currently working towards his Masters in ECE, with plans to graduate in Dec 2010.

Chong Li received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University - West Lafayette in May 2009. He has served as TA in Digital System Laboratory in Purdue University for a year and held internship in Delphi Auto during summer 2008. He is interested in signal processing and medical instruments. He is currently working towards his Masters in ECE.

Austin Kim graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in May 2009. He is currently pursuing a Masters in Electrical Engineering and is a teaching assistant for ECE 460 - Optical Imaging. His interests primarily lie in digital signal processing, communications, and languages.

Len Pan received his BS in electrical from the Ohio State University in 2006. He held a co-op at Lexmark during the spring of 2005 and from the spring to summer of 2007, where he helped perform different testing procedures. He is currently a TA in ECE for the ECE 110 laboratory class. His interests are in signal processing and speech perception, where he has taken classes on digital imaging, speech processing, digital signal processing, and communications. His current research involves the study of the human perception of vowels. He is at Sandia National Labs to start in August, 2009. Graduated 2009

Reggie Weece received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2007. During the summer of 2007 he held an internship at Shure, Incorporated, working on the updated Microflex Microphones line. While pursuing his MSME working on calibrating bone driver transducers, he has served as a teaching assistant for ECE 403 - Audio Engineering (Spring 2008) and ECE 538 - Speech and Hearing Acoustics (Fall 2008), and is working at Mimosa Acoustics in Champaign, IL. Graduated 2009

Bryce Lobdell received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University - Lafayette in 2002, and MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2006. He has held internetships at Agilent Technologies and Willtek Inc. related to wireless communications. His research interests include the study of speech perception using auditory modeling, information theory, and pattern recognition. Graduated 2009 (PhD), 2006 (MS).

Marion Regnier received a MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007, along with a "Diplome d'Ingenieur Supelec", one of the leading French engineering schools in information technologies. Her research interests include but are not limited to speech perception and hearing impairment. She is strongly interested in possibilities to combine engineering and clinical approaches in order to solve human medical challenges. Since she graduated, she has been working as a Technology Consultant for BearingPoint, Inc. (New York, NY), a leader in Management and Technology Consulting services, in the Infrastructure practice. She currently works as a project manager in a leading health care and pharmaceutical products company. Graduated 2007

Yang-soo received his BA in Electrics Engineering from Seoul National University of Technology in 1994, Seoul, South Korea and MS in EE at Texas A & M University - Kingsville in 1996. In 2008, he earned his Ph.D. in Speech and Hearing Science at UIUC. Currently he is a postdoctoral fellow at House Ear Institute, Los Angeles, CA. His primary research interest is to explain the nature of speech understanding difficulty in noise for the hearing-impaired and cochlear implant users. He also works on the topic of CI binaural hearing such as target sound source segregation from unwanted source. Graduated 2006

Sandeep Phatak completed B.Eng. in Electronics & Telecommunications from Pune Institute of Computer Technology, University of Pune in India. He received M.S. and Ph.D., both in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests are acoustics, speech perceptiosn and hearing impairment. He is currently working as Research Associate in Army Audiology and Speech Center at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC. Graduated 2006.

Pierre Parent received a MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005, along with a "Diplome d'Ingenieur Supelec", one of the leading French engineering schools in the information technologies. He has worked since 2005 for Mimosa Acoustics, Inc. (Champaign, IL) as a consultant from France, and his work focuses on research in acoustics and signal processing. In 2007-2008, he also worked for Parrot (Paris, France), world leader in Bluetooth car kits, where he developed a music spatialization algorithm for cars. Graduated 2006